Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch App Store has reached another milestone today as it was announced that over 2 billion apps have now been downloaded through the service. It was only in April of this year that the 1 billion mark was passed, nine months after the online store first launched.

The App Store now contains over 85,000 applications, in 20 different categories, which are downloaded by more than 50 million customers in 77 different countries, according to Apple. The apps themselves are created by more than 125,000 registered developers, who receive 70% of the revenue from their creations whilst Apple keep the other 30%.

"The rate of App Store downloads continues to accelerate with users downloading a staggering two billion apps in just over a year, including more than half a billion apps this quarter alone," Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, said of the news. "The App Store has reinvented what you can do with a mobile handheld device, and our users are clearly loving it."

MediaMemo have put this into perspective, doing some calculations on the figures released by Apple. In the first year of the App Store 1.5 billion apps were downloaded, averaging at 4.1 million downloads per day. Since then the next 500 millions app downloads have occurred within 76 days, averaging at a huge 6.6 millions download per day. They also say that the paid-for apps generate estimated sales of $200 million per month; with Apple keeping their 30% of this, that equates to $720 million a year.

Apple's iTunes music store is still eclipsing the app store, however, with sales of songs recently passing the 8.5 billion mark. The iTunes Store is said to account for over 70% of online digital music sales worldwide and the App Store is said to be the biggest applications store in the world.